Pot-au-feu (Boiled Meat and Vegetables)
Serves 4–6 Difficulty 3/5 Ingredients 13 Steps 12
Pot-au-feu is a typical and rustic French dish made of low-cost beef pieces and vegetables. There are many variants in France and other countries.
Ingredients
Vegetables
- 2 ea. (~380 g) onions
- 4 ea. (~500 g) carrots
- 2 ea. (~600 g) turnips (each is one handful)
- ½ ea. (~400 g) celery root OR 3–4 celery stalks
- 2 ea. (~450 g) leeks
- ¼ ea. white cabbage
- A bouquet garni made of thyme, bay leaf, and parsley
Spices
- Salt
- Ground pepper
- 4–6 cloves
- Nutmeg (if you plan to serve the broth as the first course, i.e. the traditional way)
Meat
- 1 kg low-cost, tougher beef meat (e.g. beef chuck)
- Oxtail or marrowbone (optional)
Steps
- Drive cloves into onions.
- Peel onions. Halve. Burn cut surface completely black in frying pan protected with aluminum foil.
- While burning onions, peel turnips, carrots and celery. Cut into large pieces.
- Cut roots off leeks. Wash green part well. Cut into 2–3 pieces, including green part.
- Leave quarter of white cabbage in one piece.
- Put all vegetables, ground pepper and bouquet garni in pressure cooker, arranged compactly. Add enough water to cover vegetables, or as much as fits. Fill pressure cooker no more than ⅔ to ¾ of capacity.
- Add salt. Cook under pressure 20 minutes.
- Cool pressure cooker under cold water to open. Reserve vegetables. Discard onions and bouquet garni.
- Taste golden brown broth. Add salt or pepper if needed.
- Put meat in broth. Cook under pressure 60–75 minutes.
- If using marrowbones, cook them apart or under pressure 5 minutes with the meat.
- Cool pressure cooker under cold water to open. Remove meat. Return vegetables to broth. Boil to warm them while slicing meat.
Notes from the original
- Generally speaking, use approximately 2–2.5 kg vegetables per 1 kg meat.
- For celery (root or branches), turnips and cabbage, choose in-season vegetables (which are also usually the cheapest). You can also use old-style vegetables (see section Variants below).
- Pot-au-feu is probably the number one dish to be considered (in France) as tasting better the day after. As such, you can cook it the day before you invite your guests and warm it up when you want to serve it.
- Also can you deep-freeze the broth as a base for a soup or use the meat (and possibly vegetables) for stuffing. Both are used for the making of Fleischschnacka (a specialty from Alsace).
- Many people add potatoes to their pot-au-feu but use only potatoes which resist to cooking without falling apart (Amandine, Charlotte or Ratte varieties, for example). Use one small potato per person.
- The pot-au-feu is also a great opportunity to cook old vegetables which have recently regained interest: rutabaga, parsnip, old species of carrots, etc.
Source. Adapted from “Cookbook:Pot-au-feu (Boiled Meat and Vegetables)” by Wikibooks contributors, revision of 2026-04-12, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Changes. Steps rewritten into short commands. Introduction shortened. Wiki formatting removed. This adapted recipe is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Photo. Pot-au-feu2.jpg by Andre, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia. Resized; otherwise unchanged.